So, BlackBerry has just announced it's exciting the consumer market, focussing on the enterprise instead. Worse yet, it's cutting 4500 jobs, half its workforce, which is a statistic for us, but a disaster for those involved.

The company sold just 3.7 million smartphones in the second quarter, most of which ran the older BlackBerry 7 operating system instead of the new BlackBerry 10. This means the Z10 and Q10 have been unmitigated flops. Hardly surprising though - even random people such as myself knew BB10 was going to be a hard, if not impossible, sell.

The thing that drives me nuts about the BlackBerry story is the number of people that are filled with glee at the death of a competitor in the mobile field. I'm astounded that the average person seems to rejoice at the idea of there being less competition in the mobile space, basically it seems consumers are standing around saying "Yay! BlackBerry's dead! Less choice! Awesome!"

Welcome to our brave new world of technology enthusiasts, where fanboys and posturing-wannabes are the majority. Another trend that we can thank the iFanboys and GNU/Zealots for, due their insistence on dragging every discussion down into "us VS them" partisanship. To the people who perpetuate that mindset, the only way for their side to win is for everyone else to lose - and any success for the opposition is seen as a loss for them (if not a direct threat to their own personal self-worth).

So of course fanboys will express delight at any misfortune for companies/products they see as a threat to their surrogate daddy-figure. It's a concept called "psychological transference," basically a way for simpletons to feel pride in accomplishments that they had no part in - as if they can hitch wagon to something successful & have that success somehow rub off or reflect positively on them.

The other thing that kills me is I don't know what to migrate to if/when BlackBerry finally packs it in. I can't stand Apple's anti-consumer stance, but in the mobile space I'm not sure I'm excited for Android and the security issues with it. Windows Phone? Maybe.